Mathematics degree pass and failure rates in the UK.

Hello,

I am on a mathematics degree course in Germany, and so far it looks like the course is structured to fail as many students in the first terms as possible.

In the first 6 weeks of the first term, approximately 1/3 of the students taking the Analysis module were not allowed to continue it, and out of the ones who made it to the end only 39% passed the final test.
This makes for an overall pass rate of ca. 25% in the first term of the Analysis module, I suspect the pass rates in Linear Algebra will be a bit higher, and the other subjects are not offered in the Summer term, so I don't know what the pass rates for all the modules of the first term are, but this seems terribly low.
I wonder how the pass/failure rates are in the UK, and if this is normal or if my university it trying to trip people up.

Reply 1

milienhaus

That definitely is not similar to the UK, only a very small percentage of my year actually failed (~2%). Of course, if you count Ordinarys and Thirds as a fail (which TSR seems to usually do) it's probably more like 10%, but these are technically passing grades.

Does your university have entry requirements? I had heard it was a European thing to let anyone go to university but then not everyone progress to second year due to lack of capability, but not sure how true this is.

Reply 2

wanderlust.xx

I'd say that sounds about right... the first year, even though it was all introductory, still resulted in a good number of people failing. Way more than 2%. Many students opted for a maths degree because they thought they were good at it, then failed first year because they realised they weren't.

Reply 3

nexttime

Its all on unistats - google it.

I can tell you now no UK university fails even close to 75% of its students though. Even if you counted below 2.2 as a 'fail', i doubt there is a single university that would even hit 25%.